Month: December 2016

Dec. 29, 2016: For centuries, Arctic sky watchers have occasionally reported strange sounds filling the air as Northern Lights danced overhead. Hisses, crackles, and even loud “claps” have been heard and recorded. It may be time to add a new sound to the menagerie: blaster fire.

Photographer Oliver Wright sends this report from inside the Arctic Circle: “On Christmas Night 2016, I was standing beneath an intense display of auroras in Abisko, Sweden, when I heard something that sounded like Star Wars blasters.” As the lights danced overhead, a series of rat-a-tat ‘swooshes’ emanated from a nearby set of power lines. “Other bystanders heard it, too,” he says. “I rushed closer to the power lines and was able to record a sample using my iPhone.”

Wright says that the sounds waxed and waned in sync with the auroras overhead; the brighter the lights, the louder the sounds. Distance mattered, too: “The sounds grew louder as I approached the power lines, and fainter as I moved away.”

Wright is a veteran tour guide working for Lights over Lapland, and he has heard these sounds before–”three times in total. Each time I was standing near power lines.” He recalls a particularly intense outburst of “blaster fire” during the powerful St. Patrick’s Day Storm of March 2015. In each case, guests and/or friends heard the sounds as well.

What’s going on?

“Aurora sounds” have long been a controversial topic. Some researchers insist that they exist only in the imagination of the listener, but there is growing evidence that they are real.

Perhaps the most commonly reported aurora sounds are “hissing” and “crackling,” a bit like static on a radio. These are thought to come from electric fields causing spark discharges at the pointy ends of objects like pine needles or even strands of dry hair. Aurora “claps” have been recorded as well. A researcher in Finland spent 15 years studying this phenomenon and published his results in 2012. He found that a temperature inversion layer in the atmosphere about 70 meters above the ground could cause a separation of + and – charges in the air. During strong geomagnetic storms, the charge separation breaks down, causing air to move and a “clap” to be heard.

The sounds Wright recorded may be a result of “electrophonic transduction”–that is, the conversion of electromagnetic energy into mechanical motion. At the time of the Christmas aurora outburst, magnetic fields around Abisko were seething with activity. Physics 101: Unsettled magnetic fields can cause currents to flow in power lines. Strong low-frequency currents can literally shake objects, launching acoustic vibrations into the air. Wright may have recorded the unique sound of those power lines swaying in response to the magnetic storm.

“This discussion feels poignant with the passing of Carrie Fisher as she was my childhood love and the sound is very reminiscent of Star Wars,” notes Wright.

Indeed, “Carrie’s Crackles” might be a good name for these heavenly sounds. Around Abisko, people will be listening for more as the next magnetic storm approaches. Stay tuned!

Dec. 26, 2016: Christmas Day 2016 brought a fantastic display of auroras to the Arctic Circle. A great many of them were pink. James Helmericks sends this picture from the Colville River Delta in northern Alaska:

“This was the brightest pink display I have ever seen, at one time even giving the snow a pink tinge,” he says.

On the days and nights around Christmas 2016, the pinks became so intense, they appeared white, not only to cameras, “but also to the naked eye,” says Sarah Skinner, who witnessed the strange colors several nights in a row from Abisko, Sweden. “It looked like someone had photoshopped the sky!” she says.

It is worth noting that these remarkable auroras appeared during a lull in solar activity. For three days centered on Christmas, the face of the sun was completely blank. There were no sunspots, no solar flares, and no CMEs. Instead, the display was caused by a high-speed solar wind stream blowing out of a large hole in the sun’s atmosphere. Such atmospheric holes are common during Solar Minimum, so we can expect many similar displays as the sunspot cycle crashes in the years ahead.

Dec. 26, 2016: Christmas 2016 was special for sky watchers around the Arctic Circle. The skies filled with some of the best Northern Lights of the year, including rare outbursts of white and pink. The source of the display: A giant “coronal hole” in the sun’s atmosphere sprayed our planet with solar wind. The hole opened up in July 2016 and it has been strobing Earth with solar wind every ~28 days ever since as the hole pirouettes with the slowly rotating sun.

Spaceweather.com reader Stuart Green has prepared a plot showing the evolution of the coronal hole and the effect it has had on the magnetic field at his private observatory in Preston, England. Click on the image to inspect the full 6 months:

Inset images come from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The coronal hole is the giant dark region, starting small in July, then growing and shape-shifting as the year unfolds.

The background strip chart recording shows the instability of the magnetic field around Green’s private observatory. When the coronal hole is facing Earth, big changes are measured.

“I’ve been recording geomagnetic activity over the past three years using a home built/ home designed magnetometer,” says Green. “The sensor is buried in my garden about 0.5m below the surface in an East/West orientation to allow very sensitive (sub nanotesla) measurements of magnetic declination during geomagnetic storms. The plots show the change in magnetic flux density in nanotesla occurring between readings every 2.5 minutes.”

Green’s presentation suggests that this yawning hole is a long-lived feature on the sun, and it will probably be back as potent as ever 28 days from now. Stay tuned for magnetic unrest–and more Arctic auroras–in January.

Dec. 25, 2016: Auroras are usually green. Occasionally, other colors appear: red, purple, blue. One color that never shows itself, however, is white–that is, not until last night. “I saw white auroras over Tromsø, Norway!” reports veteran observer Markus Varik. He recorded the phenomenon in this photo:

“I’ve been working more than 400 nights as a Northern Lights guide, and although sometimes I think I’ve seen it all, never I have witnessed white auroras like that,” says Varik. “It was amazing to see it unravel white like that in front of my eyes. Pure magic!”

Auroras get their colors from specific elements in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Green auroras, for instance, come from atomic oxygen; blue is associated with molecular nitrogen. No element produces white. So where did it come from?

An important clue: Elsewhere in Scandinavia, intense ribbons of pale pink appeared. Here is a specimen recorded by an automated auroracam in Abisko, Sweden:

Sarah Skinner, a tour guide with Lights over Lapland, saw the display: “OMG, it was the pinkest aurora ever!”

The ‘white auroras’ Varik photographed might actually be pink auroras filtered and paled by low-hanging clouds. Indeed, there is a strong hint of pink in Varik’s photo.

Pink auroras are somewhat rare, but hardly unprecedented. They appear when energetic particles from space descend lower than usual, striking nitrogen molecules at the 100 km level and below. Look for more in the aurora photo gallery:

Icy polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) form in the lower stratosphere when temperatures drop to around -85ºC. That’s how cold it has to be for ice crystals to form in the very dry stratosphere. High-altitude sunlight shining through tiny ice particles ~10µm across produce the characteristic bright iridescent colors.

“Once seen they are never forgotten,” says atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. “Polar stratospheric clouds have much more vivid colors than ordinary iridescent clouds, which are very much poor relations and seen frequently all over the world.”

Once thought to be mere curiosities, some PSCs are now known to be associated with the destruction of ozone. Indeed, an ozone hole formed over the UK in Feb. 2016 following an outbreak of ozone-destroying Type 1 PSCs.

“Last winter we had these clouds almost daily for long periods of time,” says Stålnacke. Arctic sky watchers are encouraged to be alert for more in the days ahead. The best time to look is just before sunrise or after sunset.

Nov. 29, 2016: This month, a lot is happening in the mesosphere. The mesosphere is a layer of Earth’s atmosphere above the stratosphere; it is the realm of sprites, noctilucent clouds (NLCs), and airglow. Starting on Nov. 17th, NASA’s AIM spacecraft spotted bright noctilucent clouds forming in the mesosphere above Antarctica. Then, in an apparently unrelated development on Nov. 24th, the normal dome of airglow over China split in two. Xiao Shuai photographed the event from Mount Balang in Sichuan:

This is called a “mesospheric bore”–and not because it’s dull. A bore is a type of atmospheric wave with deep ripples at its leading edge. Indeed, you can see the ripples in Shuai’s photo separating the zone of airglow from clear sky.

Bores fall into the category of “gravity waves”—so called because gravity acts as the restoring force essential to wave motion. Analogy: Boats in water. When a boat goes tearing across a lake, water in front of the boat is pushed upward. Gravity pulls the water back down again and this sets up a wave.

In this case, instead of water, rarefied air is the medium through which the wave propagates. The sudden boundary in the airglow layer is probably akin to a hydraulic jump. But what created the disturbance in the first place? (What is the ‘boat’?) No one knows.

“There may be updates in the coming days as scientists from NASA and the Chinese Academy of Science check data from satellites to learn more about this event,” says Jeff Dai, who has been helping Xiao Shuai process and communicate his extraordinary images. “Also, we encourage other photographers from Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India to submit their images of the wave.”